Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc., provider of the PacBio RS High Resolution Genetic Analyzer, has announced the launch of the MagBead Station for the PacBio RS. Company spokespersons say this is “a product enhancement that delivers more high-value long reads, enables use of small sample amounts, and makes sample preparation more robust.”
The MagBead Station and associated MagBead kit enable sequencing of longer templates, especially for samples that are biologically difficult to prepare. This results in more 4-10 kilobase long reads captured with each SMRT Cell. Because the process is more robust, the company claims, sequencing results have higher overall consistency. It also significantly reduces the amount of the input sample required, which can be critical for experiments when there is a small amount of useable DNA available from a sample.
The Broad Institute is among the PacBio customers that had early access to test the MagBead Station upgrade. “Initial runs using the MagBead Station on the PacBio RS look very promising,” says Chad Nusbaum, PhD, Scientific Director of Broad Technology Labs at the Broad Institute. “The MagBead Station greatly reduces any adapter-dimer that may be present in some libraries, and there are clearly benefits in terms of how much library is consumed during loading a sequencing run. Compared to diffusion loading, approximately one-tenth the library is needed to load each SMRT Cell, allowing us to contemplate much deeper sequence coverage from a single library preparation.”
The upgrade is being provided to current customers and will be directly integrated into the PacBio RS for new customers. Learn more about the PacBio RS DNA sequencing system.
